Votes are counted after the country went to the polls, Wednesday July 31, 2013 in Harare. Posing one of the biggest threats to President Robert Mugabe’s 33-year grip on power, Zimbabweans flocked to polling stations in a presidential election that will determine the course of this southern African country even as suspicions were high that vote-counting could be rigged. (AP Photo)

The head of Zimbabwe’s biggest opposition party has called the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections “a huge farce.”

“It is a sham election that does not reflect the will of the people,” Morgan Tsvangirai told a press conference at his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party’s headquarters on Thursday, the day after polls closed.

Tsvangirai, who is challenging longtime incumbent Robert Mugabe for the presidency, claimed that “administrative and legal violations” have rendered the election invalid, including intimidation and false entries on the electoral roll.

“In our view, that election is null and void,” he said, calling on regional authorities to investigate.

Zimbabwe’s largest election watchdog said Thursday that the vote’s credibility was “seriously compromised.” The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) received reports of polling stations systematically turning away thousands of voters in urban areas, where the MDC’s support is strongest, the monitor said.

Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, whose members began claiming victory as early as Thursday morning, refutes the accusations.

A spokesman told the BBC that any irregularities had affected all candidates equally, and put flaws down to a lack of resources rather than intentional fraud.

Tsvangirai is “talking absolute nonsense,” Minister of Youth Development and Zanu-PF lawmaker Saviour Kasukuwere told the Guardian’s correspondent, David Smith. Claiming that the ruling party had lost some key constituencies, Kasukuwere asked: “Would we rig against ourselves?”

The head of the African Union’s observer mission, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, said on Wednesday his initial impressions were of a “peaceful, orderly, free and fair vote.” No Western observers were permitted to monitor Wednesday’s polls.

The Zimbabwe Election Commission is due to announce its official result within five days.

The West has more to do with the Hong Kong protest movement than it would like us to know. It’s the ugly face of Washington’s long-standing foreign policy directed at destabilizing one of its long-standing economic foes: China.

The same media that has spent years dragging Assange’s name through the mud is now engaging in a blackout on his treatment. If you are waiting for corporate media pundits to defend freedom of the press, you’re going to be disappointed.

Think about who gets rich off of the Venezuela regime-change agenda. It’s the same people that said we had to invade Iraq in order to prevent nuclear apocalypse. It’s the same people who said the world would stop turning on its axis if we didn’t carpet bomb Libya and Syria.